The history of this interesting car began in the second half of the 60s of the last century. A team of designers from General Motors, led by Zhora Arkus-Dantov (an emigrant from Russia, by the way), was preparing the second generation of the Chevrolet Corvette for release.

In parallel, she experimented with rear- and mid-engined configurations, trying to build a competitor to cars such as the Ford GT40. After a series of prototypes, these ideas were embodied in two concepts, which had many serial parts in their design and were already halfway to full production.

First it was the Chevrolet Astro II, shown in 1968. The audience liked the car very much, but it was still “damp”. Paired with a powerful V8 7.0, it used a two-speed automatic from the serial Pontiac Tempest, located in a single block with a differential.

With such a transmission, the Astro II could not become a full-fledged sports car. In addition, for the sake of design, the radiators were placed there in the rear overhang, which did not contribute to the normal cooling of the engine. The Arkus-Antov team took into account all these mistakes, and already in 1969 a new, improved copy of the Chevrolet XP-882 was shown.

In it, the V8 was located transversely behind the seats, combined with a three-speed automatic transmission from Oldsmobile Toronado, and the air intake was moved to the front. The car was received with the same enthusiasm as the Astro II. Nevertheless, this concept did not go into production either.

A year earlier, Corvette Stingray was released, which had a wild success, and in order not to “spoil his raspberries”, they decided to postpone the further development of the prototype. But not for long: in 1970, Ford began selling the mid-engined De Tomaso Pantera supercars through Lincoln and Mercury dealerships, which, despite all their faults, were wildly successful.

Even Elvis Presley bought himself one. Then John De Lorean (yes, that very future car designer from Back to the Future, and at that time the chief of General Motors) decided to “uncover” the old prototype. As a “seed”, at the beginning of 1972, the public was shown the concept of the Chevrolet XP-895, which was technically the same XP-882, but with an all-aluminum body.

Those years just fell on the heyday of the Wankel rotary engine, and many large automobile companies were in full swing developing such motors. GM also did not stay away from global trends, so the engineering team was ordered to build a new prototype with just such a power unit.

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So, in 1973, a prototype of the Chevrolet Corvette Four Rotor appeared. On the chassis of the same XP-882, instead of a V8, they installed a crazy 420 hp rotary piston engine, which was two twin motors intended for installation on a Chevrolet Vega. In addition, the engineers built a new wedge-shaped body and a fully functional interior for the car.

However, the running trials of the Four Rotor showed that the sports car will not come out of it so-so. Despite the good dynamics, the maximum speed reached only 238 km / h, which was not much even at that time, and the fuel consumption was simply monstrous. And then the fuel crisis burst out … In general, in the end, the RPD was given up.

Nevertheless, the prototype still came in handy. In 1976, it was once again transformed: they made a spectacular body with panoramic glass, gull-wing doors, and four exhaust pipes. An electronic instrument panel and electric drives for adjusting the pedal assembly appeared in the interior.

The rotary engine was replaced by the classic V8 with 150 hp. The concept received the name AeroVette, and it was promised the laurels of the production Corvette of 1980. But it didn’t work out – at that moment the leadership at GM changed, and the new bosses felt that cars with a mid-engined layout of the company were not really needed.

In some ways, they were right, indeed, at that time, sales of cars with an unconventional engine layout were scanty, and the front-engined Datsun 240Z was a hit. Which defined the classic layout of the next generation Chevrolet Corvette. And AeroVette, having received its share of fame, went to the GM Museum.